drinking beer in the shower at eight pm

it's 8pm on a tuesday night and i'm drinking beer in the shower.

it's an art form, holding the thin neck like a perfect knot,

my fingers rough rope against the grit of the glass. i think of sea salt

and fishermen, and weaving upon weaving. my hands are not rough

in the way that fishermen's hands are rough. i bite the skin

around my nails and on the top of my fingers, and the water seeps

into the gaps and they bulge, like some percy shelley-esque bloated,

dead body.

it's just one beer, i tell myself, and i'm not drinking it to get drunk. no,

if i wanted to get drunk i'd have brought the bourbon or the wine

in here with me. i think my mouth just wants something to do other than beg. i kiss the lip and wonder how hard i would have to bite to see what shatters first; red blood on brown glass on rainwater-not-rainwater.

it's not just me in the house. i cried loudly before i slept last night, at five or six or whatever in the morning, and now the house has been christened with a ghost-echo that will die longer than it lived, far longer than my short, one year tenure in these rented student walls.

the others (who, might i say, are handling this whole mess of being alive with far more optimism and birthday cake than i am) are in the kitchen,

doing something with the tap. turning it off and on.

i don't think they mean for the shower to hum alongside,

my passivity the canvas for another action, and it's not like –

it's not like i mind. no, it's not like i mind.

the water is powerful, hot, then cool and slow, like rain instead of thunder, but my back is just my back.

which is to say, of course, that i'm not in here to get clean.

if i was in here to get clean, i wouldn't have brought that beer in with me.

but i digress:

i've been staring at the shampoo bottle for a while now

and my eyes have unfocused. of course. i might be the wrong way round

but i'm not stupid enough to wear my glasses in the shower.

the words are fuzzy but i can tell it's the special shampoo i bought

for when i bleached my hair in this same, small bathroom (when i tried to reclaim

a story that i'm never going to finish writing. about fishermen and people with teal hair and a hero who gets a hero's ending).

my hair is dark brown now, all over.

brown hair on brown glass on murky brown beer.

i'm supposed to think of a statement to leave you thinking about this,

about me,

but i haven't finished writing it yet.

putting an ending on something in progress feels too much like suicide.

June 2020